


Couch Surfer

by waterbird13



Series: Tumblr Fics [141]
Category: The Martian
Genre: Couch Surfing, Crew as Family, Gen, Mark can't be alone, post story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-02
Updated: 2016-09-02
Packaged: 2018-08-12 16:03:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7940668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterbird13/pseuds/waterbird13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post Mars, Mark doesn't like to be alone</p><p>More precisely, he doesn't like being without his crew. Is pretty much incapable of it, actually.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Couch Surfer

**Author's Note:**

> This is another piece I'm crossposting from a tumblr prompt.
> 
> Warnings: Mark has PTSD. He is expressing it through an inability to be alone. They're all coping together.

Vogel is the one who shrugs first. “We have a spare bedroom,” he says.

Mark does not end up in the spare bedroom, mostly because it’s isolated and large and the door shuts and closes him off and he doesn’t like it. He ends up on the Vogel’s couch, with the kids running around in the mornings and people never very far away. 

He feels a little bad, eating their food and taking their couch when he doesn’t have an income or any other contributions. He tries to help out, but he has no skills with kids. At least he’s a decent handyman, being a NASA engineer. He’s great at fixing leaky faucets.

He can’t stay in Germany forever. When he leaves, his German is actually pretty good, and Martinez flies across the ocean to pick him up. 

Which is good, because Mark isn’t sure he could do the eleven hour flight from Frankfurt to Houston on his own. Small, pressurized metal tubes aren’t his favorite anymore.

“I’m really fucked up, huh?” Mark asks one night, sitting on Martinez’s couch while his wife reads their son a bedtime story in the other room.

Martinez sits down on the arm of what Mark decidedly shouldn’t be thinking of as his couch and shrugs. “I dunno, man,” he says. “Think the first man to survive solo on a planet has a bit of a right to be, you know? And if couch-surfing is the worst of it, then we’ll make it just fine.”

Mark grins. He still leaves their couch two weeks later, although it’s not so much fear that he’s too fucked up to be around his team anymore. Mostly, it’s because Commander Lewis shows up, and offers to fly him to Chicago.

Mark’s seen his parents since coming back, of course. They met him as soon as he got out of quarantine, and he was in Chicago with them when this…problem…reared its ugly head. But it’s been months now, months, and he can’t imagine, having your son be dead and then lost in space, only to have him come home alive but be unable to stay with you.

He spends two weeks. Lewis stays too, and her husband comes for the second week. Mark shows them the sights and they eat deep-dish. It’s nice.

It’s vacation, though, and they all know it. Mark doesn’t want to interfere with his teammates’ lives anymore than he already has, even if they all assure him they’re okay with it. Okay with him. These people spent an extra year and a half in space for him. They open their homes. He wants to be accommodating.

When he leaves Commander Lewis’ home, he jokes that the disco drove him away. Johanssen just smiles indulgently.

She and Beck are living together, it turns out–and Mark called this, way back when, he _knew_  it, and now he thinks he was the best matchmaker on Mars–so he gets two teammates for the price of one.

They have a nice couch. 

When they get engaged, Mark goes back to Germany to give them some time to themselves. Lewis flies him back, and when he gets there, Vogel and his wife and their children–die Affen, as Mark is affectionately calling them now too–welcome him with open arms.

Over dinner, Frau Vogel tells him it’s nice to have the whole family back together, and Mark tears up a bit. 

Mars maybe fucked Mark up a bit, but Martinez was right. If the biggest thing he needs is to be with his family, day in and day out, then really, he’s doing okay.


End file.
